Like all bloggers everywhere, I'm going to keep going until the right person comes along and posts a comment that says "UR an idiot"... at which point I'm going to cry, soil myself, and stop forever... not necessarily in that order, of course

Thursday, December 22, 2011

And so, as much as I hate to admit it, Paul Simon was right after all: "You know, the nearer your destination, the more you're slip sliding away." I tried to finish up my thesis today. Didn't quite make it. Can't quite get over that hump of GETTING THE FRICKIN' PAGE NUMBERS RIGHT. You'd think after 10 to 15 odd years of word processing software developments that they could at least get proper page numbers right. Also, I wanted to get in a quick shave and shower, even though it's midnight. Perfect time to play an old video game, that's what I say. Here we see pictured the promised land, full of 1000-point gems... but they go quickly! Get 'em while they're hot and bothered... buttered. All that hard work in my teenage years paid off: I got to that tough room with the tiny ledges, and you have to jump to get the torch. A mere trifle, a mere trifle. That and Miner 2049er; I scoff at thee! It's the other Montezuma game that freaks me out. What's with the giant dude that can kill you simply by stamping his feet? Cold blooded. Never played that one in my youth. It's almost a damn shame. Okay, back to Farmville and my thesis.

The subway. The tow trucks. The sheep in Central Park. The walking hamburgers! Those damn pretzels. The sights. And finally, the granddaddy of them all: the key to the city. Join the adventure. Tis been a while for me, but I decided to go to my local New York bank and take out about $3,000 and go on a splurge. Probably why I only got the rank of New York Cabbie Class 3. What is it with Synapse games and those damn ranks? The Central Park part seems to be the hardest part for me now. The mart's just plain annoying. I hit the walls just to get done faster; hell with it. Plop the pretzel and jump right back; well worth the $50. If it were Ultima 4, I'd have to be good and virtuous, of coruse. They gotta update the game, though, what with the World Trade Center being gone and all... sigh.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Welp, it's past my bedtime once again, and I'm about to be reprimanded... perfect time to play some Air Strike II, also on Spiele 42, or whichever one I'm on right now. I'm a lazy man, and I can't be bothered to change the Spiele on my Atari emulator. I dunno; Air Strike II never really did it for me. I guess I beat Level one all those years ago, and that was enough. Just beat level one now, and I forged as far into level two as I could before I bought it courtesy of one of those spinny tracky enemy things. Didn't shoot it in time. This game is like Super Cobra and Caverns of Mars II rolled into one... but you can control the scrolling speed, which is kinda neat. And you don't have infinite bullets! You don't usually get to use them all up anyway, but I'm more and more appreciative of games where you have to be careful with your bullets. Even the Doom series sort of forces you to consider that. That's how far behind the times I am. Does Call of Duty have infinite bullets? Or are there just boxes of bullets just lying around for you to pick up, as they seem to do in all video games?

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Well, while I'm waiting for my Farmville fuel to finish, and waiting for another word in Words with Friends, why not dip back into the seamy underbelly of the Atari Emulator? First up, Shadow World. Got to round 5! Haven't ever flipped the score in this one before... better put it on my to-do list. Then, Pinhead. The Atari version of Kick... I think it was called Kick, from the people who brought you Pac-Man. They now bring you a clown on a unicycle that you control with a trackball. You catch balloons and Pac-Mans... but don't catch the bombs! I gotta go, fuel's almost done. Imagine that! Wheat, soybeans and wool... as long as there's no corn ethanol! Even Farmville wouldn't do that.

2:10am, saturday... Damn! Can't flip the score! Got to 100,000 by not plugging up the active pods as quickly as I problably should of

Monday, November 21, 2011

Hey kids! How about Pac-Man, but the dots move? Yeah, the dots are in some sort of "caterpillar" type formation. Also, there's three bad guys chasing you, and they kill you only about half of the time. I guess the way it works is: once they escape their individual "ghost box"es, you can kill them the first go-round. After that, they kill you right back! I stopped at about level 15 or so. Well, it gets too loud and too sluggish. Worse than ms. Pac-Man, frankly. That's the trouble with female avatars: they get bloated much faster than the male ones, apparently. I know, I know, it's the way they're programmed. Fuhgeddaboutit...

Up past my new bedtime. Damn winter! I'm moving South, damn it... oh, right. Every place on earth will be summertime year round soon enough as it is. Enjoy the snow while it lasts. Until then, there's always Ron J. Fortier's BRUCE LEE. His one mistake: going with Datasoft. That was a big dead end right there.Now, you might not know it from my score, or even my number of "falls", but there's this little trick. If both the ninja and the sumo guy are standing together, and you fall on top of them both... you get extra points for that! Well, you know gamers. They'll do anything for an unfair advantage. That's what was good about Ultima IV: that game at least tried to get people to act properly. Unfortunately I was never able to figure it out, and now in the emulator it doesn't work. The lowliest orc is somehow impossible to kill. I gotta stop listening to this George Carlin thing. He talks about Mallomars, and now I want to buy some. Shame on me.

Friday, November 18, 2011

Well, I've been on a bit of a tear lately. This FarmVille is getting increasingly time-intensive. I'm going to have to hire an intern to play for me! My 9 o'clocks haven't been mine lately. I'm on the West coast, so the big change-over happens for me at nine, and I can start leeching off other peoples' bushels again. Oh! And I just upgraded my silo from 150 to 300, so I can finally take advantage of all the damn trees I got... sad, isn't it? And now it's spreading to something called "Words with Friends." Gotta get that out of my system now. But I am addicted to waiting for the next word to appear. Gotta learn to go for the triple word or triple letter scores, of course. If I were the Scrabble people, I'd sue!Anyway, enough of these so-called "modern" games. Let's put another footstep into the past. I'm back to "Spiele 36" which features Activision's upgrade of Enduro called The Great American Road Race... something like that. Well, I do need my racing game fix. Fuel, cops, crashes... it's got it all. Enduro with a few more bells and whistles.And then, of course, the game of the week. I might have blogged about this one before, but it's worth blogging about again. A more structured version of Berzerk called K-Razy Shootout, and there's something faintly Christian about it. Well, for starters, you get punished if you leave a level early, which also includes not waiting for the last robot to completely explode. And then, you have to do the whole level all over again and NOT SCORE ANY POINTS for it!!! Smacks of Sunday school, somehow. At one point, I distinctly remember taking advantage of the Atari emulator, and saving my position in K-Razy Shootout. All the way up to level 7, when things thankfully slow down again! But I do have some faint, fond memories of actually getting to level 6 on my Atari 1200 XL, and freaking out at the extreme speed of those damn robots! Love that game. I think I might have to rebuild my collection of saved states. Don't know what I did with the previous ones.

Sunday - GEEZ! FINALLY!!!! Finally beat level 7... I'm sorry, I mean "Sector 7." Finally entered Sector 8. Somehow, Sector 8's worse. The robots aren't as fast, but they shoot as fast. And frankly, I'm totally lost when it comes to dodging crossfire. I guess I wouldn't make a good infantry in war. I'd run right into a bullet, for God's sake! Ever do that when you're playing? Oh, I forgot to mention that K-Razy Shootout's probably the only machine language game in Graphics 5 mode. Crockford's Galahad and the Holy Grail is in Graphics 3... that's all I can think of off the top. Most use redefined characters of one stripe or another, generally.In general, Sector 7 of K-razy Shootout is not a good game to play at 1:30 in the morning. It gets one too amped up. How are you supposed to sleep after that? Egg-xactly.Damn. Waiting on Words with Friends again... this'll take forever, damn it!

Saturday, November 12, 2011

This may be the craziest game I've ever played. I'm of course just lucky I've got the version with unlimited lives. I lost about 500 my first try. Not a lot of kissin'! A lot of jumpin' and bitin' the bullet. There's worms, crabs, springy things, and they're ALL DEADLY! There's the bat from Pitfall II. You've got the avatar from Montezuma's Revenge but without the Mexican hat. Personally, I don't want to play a game where you have to shoot the bad kangaroo. Not many of those games. In Flip and Flop, you ARE the kangaroo. Well, just in the odd-numbered levels. In the even ones, you're the monkey. Anyway, if all that stuff on the ground wasn't enough... they got planes flying by dropping bombs on you! I don't think I got a chance to get killed by one of those, though. The stuff on the ground was plenty. Plenty of obstacles standing still that kill you too! Shrubs, brick walls, garbage cans with self-lifting lids. Love it. May I never play it again. I kept trying with Blue Max again... doesn't work. If you bomb one of the final three things, it breaks the computer. Sorry, Blue Max, but I'll just have to remember your finale. A lot of these Synapse games are real smart-asses with their various ranks. Runway sweeper, kamikaze trainee... Of course, if you don't make it off the runway, what kind of kamikaze training is that?

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Of course, as I've said at least once before, I am an old-fashioned guy, and I prefer the gameplay of "The Last Starfighter." Better scrolling, not as beep-y... something like that. Oh, and the biggie! You can stay on the star's surface a couple extra seconds as you recharge. Take your time! Solar power, baby. The only way to go. Ah, the tedium of shooting at the big ships, how I missed it. Yes, unfortunately for the galaxy, the enemy's acquired deadly circle-drawing technology. It's a never-ending geometry-based arms race. Will the good guys triumph? It seems they never do for long...

I love these kind of old games like this where the more ships you add, the slower EVERYTHING gets. Another of the kind of games they'd have at school, and they're more fun when you're not playing them. As for me, I still haven't figured out how to stay away from that giant sub-eating fish! That one always gets me, because it always comes after the fuel fish that gets released, and if you don't catch it, the big fish comes and eats you. Is this the stuff of serial gameplay? Nah, on to the next thing. More Boulder Dash! Is it too late to find Blue Max 1? Probably. It's 3 AM, for Pete's sake!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Maybe I'm just in a bad mood, but I'm starting to feel like Maddox! The game play's retarded, the music sounds like a farting robot, and there's only nine game boards. What kind of game wraps around after nine game boards! A retarded game! Snokie's a genius compared to this thing. The only reason it's not an Atari Basic game is because the things move so fast... compared to Basic, anyway. They're both pretty unforgiving in their own ways, but at least in Snokie you stay on level ground. Dinky-Do can't seem to handle precarious ledges. Now, some might say that level 3's pointless, but there needs to be SOME kind of a cakewalk in this thing. Too ridiculous. And for those of you PC police out there who don't appreciate my use of the word "retarded," well, all I can say is I'm sorry, but at least I didn't call it a "retard." "Retard" is bad. "Retarded" is acceptable. Kevin Smith says "re-re." That should be unacceptable.Just double-checked. Dinky-Do is indeed hyphenated.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Another classic from Epyx. This is about as good as 3D gets on the Atari. I feel strangely underwhelmed, though... but that's what you get for 16K of program. For the first time ever I finally cleared a whole Monster Maze maze torte... no payoff? All those points and nowhere to spend them on powerups? Am I just doomed to wander the maze forever? ..oh, crap. Did I have to engulf all the monsters, Pac-Man style? Guess I'm not THAT interested... gotta get back to my other lot in life

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

For all those times when you've felt like you had to smash a whole bunch of critters... this one's for you. Of course, there's always a price to pay: there's three glowing baddies that you CAN'T smash. Small price to pay, though. Great game play. This is one of those that I read about a long time ago, but I didn't have a modem to download an illegal copy. In some ways, I still don't... nah, that doesn't make sense.

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Another Roklan classic. I used the artifacting here on account of it's in Graphics 8. You remember Graphics 8, don't you? An artifact, indeed, of a less technologically savvy era. A Cold War era, if you will. Depending on where you place the pixel, it'll be red or green; two together, and you get blue and brown. Complicated stuff. Or, you could switch Graphics 8 over to Graphics 15 and get a thin Graphics 7. I once made a version of Tetris in Graphics 15. Why doesn't anyone try that today? And if they do, why don't they shout a little about it, for Goodness zake?What was I talking about? Oh, right. Diamond Mine. I usually end up losing more than 3 diamonds and ruining my Diamond Mine innocence, but I still kinda dig the game play. The aliens. The dirt. The airlocks, and the satisfaction of a job well done, liberating those pure diamonds from the evil liberal aliens... I mean, aliens. Just aliens. There's no need for politics in Roklan's Diamond Mine.Or maybe they're monsters... are they monsters?

Oh yeah, I forgot. Also started my Wizard of Wor for future generations. Too slow, too constricting of game play. And yet, I and my fellow gamer tried to go as far with it as we could. The excitement of the Morluk... Worluk? The winged thing that gives you double the points. And then, the Wizard himself... oh, the randomness of it all. The infuriating randomness. It is the gamer's job to bring order to the chaos.

Ah, Space Invaders. Invaders from outer space. Aliens, if you will. And yet, those two words have a connotation near and dear to the heart of every gamer older than 35. There's no beating the cadence or the rude noises of the Atari 2600 version, though. 128 variations of gameplay, what fun! I guess it's the principle of the thing... why didn't they make it so that maybe you could go through all the variations IN ONE GAME? Instead of having the aliens starting one row from the end of the game for the rest of the game? I guess it was a hint that it's time to go outside and play in the real world or something. With Deluxe Invaders, we get a little creativity. We get the alien cruise ships that pass along the top of the screen that occasionally replenish the bad guys! Neat-o. Doesnt' happen often enough.

I'll get my act together here in a minute. But before I do... damn, 30 minutes to 9 o'clock pm. When 9 hits, that means I gotta get to my fresh Farmville chores, and my Tetris Battle chores. Anyway, Mr. Do's Castle, the game that begs the philosophical question: what good is trying to get an extra life in a game you don't want to play in the first place? Oh, to be sure, it's got its merits. Those bad guys are sneakier than they look! They always seem to find the roundabout way to come and gitcha. For some reason I prefer that Mr. Do game where you get to roll those steamroller thingies and smash the beasties. Mr. Do's Landscape? Alas, but the Atari 8-bits aren't terribly able when it comes to complex real-time gaming. Why, even Mr. Do's Castle strains the medium in its own limited ways! If you play the game too long, the bad guys start to multiply by two every 20 seconds or so, and any Atari expert will tell you that it's already bad enough with one player and five bad guys. Why, they're not going to look glittery and translucent by any chance, are they?

Friday, October 28, 2011

Another wasted day. But at least I took care of most of my Jet Boot Jack-related tasks. The great thing about this emulator is you can eventually play a perfect game of anything, never losing any lives in the process. And so, I'm up to... level 52 with all nine lives, and a score of about.. well, it's a lot, that's the main thing. Unfortunately, when you get to level 6, your fuel bonus stays at 500! Bummer. Personally, I can't think of a better gift to bequeath the next generation than a great starting point in Jet Boot Jack... of course, they'll probably want to get themselves up to speed. Phooey. The system's rigged against people like us. All the important squirrels already get all the good nuts... right, David Letterman?

11/10/'14 - ANOTHER wasted day! But I finally decided to power through and flip the score. Once is enough for me... boy! Some hardcore gamer I turned out to be! For those who might be interested, it happens by the time you get to Level 11, round 10. Of course, I probably could have done it sooner if I maximized my usage of the pink power pills, but alas, I didn't. Some hardcore gamer I am! In fact, I seem to be quite inflexible when it comes to playing this game. Sometimes I can't help but run into the same bad guys over and over again in the same spots at the same time. I think it's because, well, that's just how enjoyable this game is, frankly. If it were a much more annoying game, then sure, can't get it over with fast enough. Not the case with Jack Booted Thugs, on the other hand... I mean, Jet Boot Jack. Love that game. But I will point out that the sound it makes when you get one of the notes is different from when I played this on an actual Atari computer. Wazzup w/that?

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Sorry, but I always have to be fancy that way. It's a perverse streak in me. You know, Wikipedia's got a great entry about the star Beta Lyrae, aka Sheliak. Check it out for me, as I don't have time to learn such things. Philip Price's video game The Tail of Beta Lyrae doesn't seem to provide much in the way of backstory... then again, it's yet another game I didn't come across in the normal legal manner, with a big fancy box and booklet and all that extra jazz. As always, it's an insane trip, and more than occasionally unfair, as it relies on a formula to draw the playing field, and sometimes the playing field takes an extra sharp dip, and they put some obstacle that's hard to get at right there in the crotch of the sharp dip. Once you get past the first four tough sectors, it's relatively smooth, high-scoring sailing from then on, at least until the next level of difficulty starts. As for me, I'm off to the next task: a perfect game of Jet Boot Jack. God bless Atari emulator!

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

This is the kind of nut I am: I'm trying to beat Miner 2049er, and going through all the levels to do it... I'm pretty sure I won't be able to do Level 9, Zone 3 or Zone 9, level 3... lemme double check that... Station 3, Zone 9! That's the one. Not enough time to get the goodies and smash the nuclear pixies, whatever they're called. Okay, I think I got it out of my system. Damn, those station 10s get damn near impossible when the pixies go at full throttle speed! Pointless, one might even say. But I managed to do two of them. It'll really get impossible when the lower left-hand one on the first level gets any faster. Oh, and the emulator version here doesn't let you go ridiculously fast on zone 10 like the cartridge did! Also it kinda made it pointless because you'd jump way WAY too far. Ah, the good old days...

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011; 10:14pm - Quick update: yup, Station 3, Zone 9. The gaming becomes impossible, as the nuculear pixies recover too quickly when you grab a tool to bash them with, and they travel too fast that you can't avoid hitting them as you try to jump over them. I'm PRETTY PRETTY sure it's not worth trying... but now I'm wondering if I have the version where you can jump really REALLY far in Zone 10... sigh, better check that out now.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Just to show you I've been keeping busy. More compact than the original Jumpman, of course. I kinda miss those Grand Puzzle levels... why can't they just make a Jumpman Grand Puzzle game? When is someone going to do Jumpman Flash? Do I have to do EVERYTHING around here?!!!!!

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Sad, isn't it? Another task to do. Apparently in Mafia Wars 2, you have to wait every 10 minutes to collect monies from your casino. Why not? I'm just doing it to get to level 5 to get $1 million chips in Zanga Poker... and it better work, too! Meanwhile, I'm waiting on farmville crops, so why not dive back in to the seamy underbelly that is the TI99 emulator? I kinda like the Tournament mode of Munch Man II. You only get one life to squander there. Gives you a feeling of carpe diem! We don't get enough of that these days. I live every day as my last. I spent three hours today working on funeral arrangements......and remember! F9 is the "Back" key. Redo... I forget.

Friday, October 21, 2011

If I'm going to lose, I want to lose fast. Incidentally, I am an idiot, and somehow seeing the possible places I can move amplified my idiocy. NOT seeing the possible places I can move, and I have to think about it. Wonder if they got Gomoku and Tic Tac Toe too?

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

So, where did I leave off with my TI99 emulator? Ah, yes. Othello. I lucked out this time. I usually suck at these board games. And arcade games, come to think of it, but Lord help me, I keep trying! This time, the computer didn't place as much stock as it should of on the corner real estate! That's the key. Grab as many of those as you can. The computer got the last one because I ran out of moves. I made myself obsolete because of my own awesomeness! Go figure. Only in a board game.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Hmm! That's not exactly how I remember the ending. Better make this short; I don't want to wake our guest. But before we dive into the game, let me just take this opportunity to spew some of my Right-wing tendencies. They say that the programmer of this game is a trans-gender. He's now a she. For the life of me, I don't get it. Why would someone want to do that? I mean, sure, who doesn't want to change everything about themselves? But, to actually go through with something like that? I wouldn't want to do it, and I still don't get it. And, on the other side of the coin... why would anyone want to beat up a trans-gender person? Apparently they get beat up a lot. Who on earth would want to beat up a trans-gender? Bragging rights? Boredom? Sorry, but I've been watching a lot of George Carlin lately. Seems to me you'd treat a tranny with extra kid gloves. I would, anyway. Of course, with all the atrazine in the environment, we're all a little gendy-bendy these days. Ooh! Lemme check urbandictionary.com... ah, skip it. Anyway, Zeppelin. You gotta hand it to that Mataga. She-he was a great game designer. Shamus, Shamus 2... well, Shamus 1 and Zeppelin, anyway. Sorry, I can't do text games anymore... hmm! Wonder if they got Zork? And is it worth trying to beat? Probably not. Oh, I'm sure I'll dive back into Zork soon enough. Anyway, gotta do my usual... The enemy blimps. The flying rocks. The bladders. The switches. The bladder-switches. The keys, the T.N.T., the extra lives. The seemingly endless modular mazes, the big explosions, the descending levels, and the magic that is... ZEPPELIN. Silly me, I originally stopped at Level 5. It was an interesting experience flying blind, so to speak. ...probably not going to find level maps on the web. Oh well. Besides! You score more points when you roam around, totally lost. Man, did I get lost on Level 1, the last level. I had to go from one end of the maze to the complete other end of the maze... a long way, my friends. There's four levels of difficulty, as with Shamus, but unlike Shamus, they're actually half-ass playable in Zeppelin! I figure if I've got enough extra lives, maybe I could actually do Advanced or Expert... or maybe I need to get on with my life. I gotta bross and flush. anyway... floss and brush. 2 in the morning, man! Plus, I'm keeping our guest awake...

Monday, October 17, 2011

As in, you'll be batty yourself after playing this game for ANY length of time! A combination of Frogger and every catching game you've ever played, but with a twist. The first round is strictly the catching game... any of you ever play that old Antic! magazine about the toxic waste dump? Well, this is kinda sorta like that, except that you can place the blocks anywhere. First, you gotta catch the blocks. And you gotta put your arms up to do it, otherwise you get smashed into nine particles... hmm! Where have I seen that before? Oh, right... Firefleet, also by M.D. Caballero... well, a slight variation on the same theme. So, you gotta make sure you put your arms up to catch these things, then you gotta throw it back up into the air onto the "loading" platform, for lack of a better term. If you happen to miss and the box falls back down on you, you better stand out of the way. Don't even try to catch it, because this time it will shatter you to bits either way. Somehow this game is an unlikely champion of OSHA and worker safety. If you can't get to the thing in time, let it fall and smash. Life above all else. And, kinda like Citadel Warrior, each new level gets progressively harder and more pointless to play. As if the catching wasn't hard enough, and precise placement of each kind of box, I forgot to mention... now, you have to stay out of the way of these "round" obstacles with an 'X'. Somehow, it's a bad kind of excitement that doesn't make me want to play. Back to Jet Boot Jack for me.

The giant lobsters. The bouncing snakes. The monsters from your closet. The flying magnets. And knife after knife after knife... Ah, it's been a while since I dwelled in the world of Drol. And poor Aik Beng had to go back to their day job programming in Cobol at IBM after he or she got screwed by Broderbund. How many more have to die? But Broderbund's not even getting the last laugh. Do they even exist anymore? ... apparently they do. Their web site is a couple steps above being one of those sites that says "What you need, when you need it." The days of Lode Runner are far behind them, sadly. Now they're merely helping Bill Gates usher in the next wave of communication: talking to your computer, literally, and telling it what to do. Personally, I get winded lifting my arms. Now I'm going to lose my voice too? But back to Drol. I'm so spoiled now. It used to be you'd have to wait for the next level to load. The ol' Atari disk drive's a tad slower than today's drives. Now it's lost all meaning! Instantaneous loading. Well, maybe I can get used to it, what the hell...

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Kissin Kousins - I know I should be thrilled about this game, but for some reason I'm not. Same with that Gossip game by the Eastern Front programmer

Jaw Breaker - I've played that!

Blue Max - Another Synapse classic

Fort Apocalypse - A Synapse classic... I should like it more

Embargo - Frogger with spaceships?

Centipede - Classic. Especially when you get a nice set of two vertical lines of mushrooms that the centipede keeps getting caught in

Wizard of Wor - Classic

Mr. Do's Castle - Something depressing about that game

Oil's Well - Combination of Pac-Man and any number of games where you play an aardvark, and have to maneuver its tongue through a maze.

Chicken Chase - Can't do it...

Wall War - Not what you think...

Caverns of Mars - Forever enshrined in the movie D.A.R.Y.L. ... actually, the game may outlive that movie

Captain Cosmo - I did the math finally on this one. I'd have to play to level 67 to flip the score on this one... now, why on earth would anybody do that? Save yourself the trouble. Check yourself into a mental institution.

Wehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giflp, I'm just glad I didn't plunk down the $89.99 it surely must of cost back in the day. There are apparently five programmers who made Trivia Quest possible, but the heavy hand of Jon Atack is most apparent. If you've played his Quasimodo at all, you should know what I mean. The characters move like Quasimodo, and when you kill the dragon it sounds like Quasimodo picking up a gem. And I'm pretty sure their answer to the Mt. Rainier question was wrong, but never mind. Moops!

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Awright! Got that out of my system... sort of. Pac-Man Jr., Tank Commander, Jumping Jim... think I've had enough of Jumping Jim for one lifetime. Back to the list

Salmon Run - Kinda fun! Makes you feel like a fish

Starfire - Lemme tell you something: spaceship lasers shouldn't sound like Demons to Diamonds. This is serious stuff, not a day at the carnival.

Monkey Magic - Welp, I tried it. I tried and tried to get as many of those things as I could... Maybe I didn't try hard enough, but I feel like I did. As David Mamet once quipped, people need to get along and get ahead. I did neither with Monkey Magic.

Slinky - Passable Q-Bert clone. For a Cosmi game, I guess it's what one would call exemplary.

Cyclod - For the clod in all of us. Hunter Hancock got to level 21!

Panama Joe - It's Montezuma, damn it! Montezuma. I played the $#!t out of that game back in the day

Killa Cycle - I have yet to beat Killa Cycle.

Preppie! - Another classic Frogger variation. Used to load it off of a cassette tape back in the day.

Preppie! 2 - Bore-ring.

Richard Petty's Talladega - For a Cosmi game... actually, this one's pretty good! But I have to move on now...

Behind Jaggi Lines - Oh, I just hope George Lucas doesn't find out about this game

Space Cadet - If the aliens want people that badly, they can have 'em.

Plattermania - The devil's bargain, indeed: you can score a billion points, but you have to do it playing Plattermania.

Titan 1 - Not as good as Caverns of Mars, and harder to play. Great combination.

Asteroids - Another instance where the 2600 version is superior. Go figure.

Castles and Keys - Interesting, but not idiot-proof, especially the level they're showing. For instance... what if you can't reach the door because THE CONVEYOR BELTS SIMPLY BLOCK YOU?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jr. Pac-Man - From the maniacal programmer what brung you the Atari cartridge version of Ms. Pac Man, comes Jr. Pac-Man. Accusations of violating child labor laws rocked the Pac-Man community, and the citizens of Pac World couldn't help but ask: why is the child asked to eat three times the dots the adults are? And no exits? For shame! At least have vertical exits if you're worried about scrolling issues and the carpal tunnel syndrome that might result...

Tapper - Never got into that one. It'd be perfect to play in a bar, of course

Snokie - Good double bill with Sea Dragon

Seafox - Love it, but how come the big fish always puts an end to the proceedings? What kind of a fish eats a submarine? What kind of a fish is LARGER than a submarine?

Dig Dug - I grow weary of Dig Dug.

Necromancer - I don't get it

Archon - Archon 2's a little more fun to me.

Boulder Dash - Classic

Boulder Dash II - Just as classic, go figure

Super Zaxxon - We've experienced a loss in scrolling quality in moving from Zaxxon to Super Zaxxon! Maybe that's for the best. I always thought Zaxxon moved too fast anyway. Another one of those games we would load in on an audio cassette. Crazy times.

River Raid - An infinitely different maze! How'd they do that? Okay, there are similarities, but still...

Protector II - Hate that game. One time I won on Level 6! No, seriously! I got all 18 people to safety... NO ONE PLAYS LEVEL 6. NOT EVEN MIKE POTTER HIMSELF EVER PLAYED LEVEL 6!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Spy Hunter - Another game that relies on two joysticks... Then again, I think they give you a keyboard option... nah, somehow still not worth it

Jeepers Creepers - Where'd you get that Amidar clone?

Pooyan - I grow weary of Pooyan.

Frogger - Weary of Frogger, too. Seinfeld and all...

Joust - Classic

Hero - That's H.E.R.O. to you. Classic. Why, I even went to the trouble of getting a million points in the emulator version!

Atom Smasher - Meh...

Phobos - Meh...

O'Reilly's Mine - Meh... Did I ever tell you about the time I... ak, ship it...

Gridrunner - I remember seeing an ad in a magazine... Compute!, perhaps, saying that even the creator of Gridrunner can't beat it. As a one-time game maker wannabe myself, I know all too well that it's possible to make a game you can't beat, especially if it's like Gridrunner. Level 31's impossible, of course, but so is level 10, or thereabouts. It's a war of attrition, an unwinnable war of attrition, or collateral damage... one of the two.

Quadromania XL - If you can figure out how to start the game, it's kind of a hoot! Just the pick me up I needed. There's probably all kinds of Flash versions of the same game on the web... someone else look for 'em for me, will ya?

Megalegs - Not bad, but I prefer my PC emulation of the arcade version of Millipede

Shamus - Classic

Missile Command - Traumatic classic

Stargunner - I used to program games in Action! I guess I never got to the part where you can compile the game and NOT have to use the Action! cartridge

Jet Boot Jack - Classic

Neptune's Daughters - Why did I play that game so much?

Donkey Kong Jr. - Not as good as Donkey Kong

The Bean Machine - Love that game

Cannibals - Kinda looks like Apple Panic to me

Adventure in the 5th Dimension - God, I hate these text only games. Zork screwed me up enough as it is

Gunfight - I used to play this with a friend for some reason! Just glad I didn't plunk down $59.99 for it, or some other ungodly figure

Up 'n Down - Don't like it

Star Wars - Sheesh... The Atari wasn't meant to handle games it couldn't handle, know what I mean?

Speed Puzzle - TETRIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Frogs & Flies - Love it

Night Strike - Love it

Gomoku - Hate it. Something sobering about being beaten by a 30 year old game

Droids - Too 20's art-deco for my taste.

Berzerk - Intruder alert, intruder alert...

Repton - Sheesh... I mean, like it!

Canyon Cli... - HATE IT HATE IT HATE IT

Countdown - Love it.

Flak - Classic... actually, I don't care for it. Xevious was bad enough, but blasting that 6502 at the end is probably worth it.

I'm going to use this valuable resource as a chance to do some "power-blogging." I tend to run on at the keyboard a bit, but I'll try to keep it short... and just comment on the ones I've played

Draconus - This must be an Atari 130XE or Atari ST game. To me, it's not a traditional Atari 8-bit game

Clowns & Balloons - This is more like it, but I'm partial to Pinhead myself, or the Atari 2600 version of the theme

Raid Over Moscow - Bloody classic... did I blog about that one already?

Drop Zone - It's better with a joystick

Q-Bert - A slightly better version! Kewl. But that Parker Bros. cartridge version has kitsch value... and the sound effects have been used in some movies, but I forget where and when

Road Race - A glorified Atari Basic game! I love it

Encounter - Another Synapse classic... have they ever made a bad game?

Alley Cat - ....oops! Spoke too soon

Zorro - That, plus the Goonies... Datasoft classics

Miner 2049er - Classic... except it becomes unplayable at some point... don't wanna find out where just yet, I guess

Ghost Chaser and Ollie's Follies - Two halves of the same game? I think so

Jungle Hunt - I'm just glad I didn't pay for it

Hacker - Classic... I think I might have won it once, but it's perhaps the only video game to advocate for geothermal energy... or against it? Well, there was a Cold War on. You might remember from the textbooks

Blue Max 2001 - Looks like Panther

Night Mission Pinball - I should play that one again! Why... think I'll try it right now. 'Scuse me

Monday, October 10, 2011

Oh, wait... Got that bass-ackwards, I guess. Welp, the deed is done! 5 million FarmVille coins, farm expanded... and yet, I feel strangely empty. Actually, after I did that, I re-arranged my home farm. I had a little ambiguity. Some farm plots were covered. Kinda like in that game Gubble where the last thing you have to unscrew is just around a corner you can't quite see. If it was Quake you'd get the full 3D effect. Something like that. But everything's in order now. All trees lined up, then the buildings, then the animals, and it's smooth farming from now on. There's a coupla bastards I got that I need to keep ahead of, for some reason... will I Ever get my life back?

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Dang, that was fast! I'm already up to 4.8 million coins in Farmville. Less than a week, and I'll be able to expand my fu... my bloody English countryside by two plots. But just to show you what a pathetic old rocker I am, Tumble Bugs is one of those games that I thought was just so awesome because somebody was playing it at school somehow, and I didn't have full-on access to it, so I didn't know at the time what a letdown it really is. First of all, it's basically a Pac-Man ripoff without the excitement. Second, there's too many bugs that can trap you in too many dead ends. Some games don't want you to play them. Third.... nah, I guess those two complaints about cover it. I do like that the score decreases by one point a second, because we don't have enough reminders in our daily lives that someday each one of us is going to die, and that we have to make the best use of the time we have. Take Steve Jobs, for example. Everyone in the main stream is currently lighting their lighters and holding them up high for Steve Jobs. He was "the people's billionaire" (TM). He was like John Lennon... wait, what? Someone in the media said he was like John Lennon, except he was killed by cancer, not by a Nixon-funded assassin. In fact, the more one hears about Jobs, the less one is likely to like him all that much. When someone went to Jobs and told him they did a subroutine in three steps, Jobs would say "Do it in two." When someone went to Jobs and told him they did a subroutine in two steps, Jobs would say "Do it in one." Is this the kind of example we should all live by?... Yes, it is. Be more demanding of people. Make them reach for the stars. Say you're a kid with a messy room. If it takes you an hour to clean said room, do it in 30. If it takes you two hours to do your stupid math homework, do it in one. Do it on the bus ride home from school! Puke out the window if you have to, if you get carsick on the bus. Leave your mark on the world. If you're a homeless bum on the street, dance a sympathy jig. Dance two! Get your name out there! Network. Work together with your fellow bums. Innovate! Make a sign that says "It's for beer." Be honest. Work night shifts at the supermarket. Ask people for large amounts of money. Dream big! Ingratiate yourselves to rich lonely widows.I'm sorry. That was very wrong of me. Steve Jobs was a great man, and he will be missed. Fu¢k Bill Gates, and fu¢k that Judas Wozniak. Jobs is the one.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Still waiting to get 5 million coins in FarmVille so I can expand my damn British farm. I'm up to exactly 4,260,070 so far. That's about 84%, right? Well, I know that tomorrow about this time I'll get an extra 200,000 or so from all my trees, so 15 days from now I should be at my goal, provided I don't plant anything. Too many features to that game, too many. Gotta lay low for a while. Wonder if they're ever going to have Pink Carnations again. I've got 68 bushels of them that I've been saving. That's part of the FarmVille beauty.But let's put a foot in the past again. Oh, Congo Bongo, how I missed you so. Two levels of increasing difficulty. How those two monkeys didn't manage to throw me off the ledge I'll never know. Guess I didn't play long enough this time. I used to have this on cartridge, of all formats! Isn't that crazy? Hope I didn't shell out $34.95 for that... crap, someone's at the door...

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Okay, so not only is it virtually the same game, you don't even get points for jumping over the goats anymore! The programmer is devolving for once. There's no TNT box to detonate, but you still have to go to the same place. The Indians in the 2nd round have been replaced with a more politically correct pooping donkey... or kicking donkey, I don't know what the hell's going on. All I know is that THAT's screwed up. The third round's the same, but there's no ironic humor this time, because the whole song plays, and THEN the goat comes and knocks you off the mountain. Oh, and the lives are horizontal lines instead of vertical this time.

Ah, the thrill of loading a game into your computer with an audio tape. On the other hand, I used to do that with Preppie! Canyon Climber: not as worth it. A Donkey Kong clone, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was programmed by the same dude that did the Coleco Atari 2600 Donkey Kong. The music's a little better, arguably. Also, if I remember correctly, Canyon Climber II's basically THE SAME CRAPPY GAME!!!!!!!

Awright, let's get some blogging done. I'm still kind of a sucker for Repton, this Defender clone from Sirius Software. It's probably the best thing Sirius has done... okay, except maybe Cyclod and a couple others I haven't played. Wavy Navy I have played, their take on Galaxian. Silly fun. Moogles I tried to play, their take on Ghost!. Not as good. I do like their 2600-style stuff: Squish 'Em, Fantastic Voyage, Fast Eddie, Turmoil, even Final Orbit to a degree. I hate the fact that Final Orbit keeps ending prematurely. Probably for the best, though.The thing that gets me about Repton is that they've got all this defensive shield stuff, yet it's STILL not enough to protect me. I guess it doesn't help that you can only move when you're firing bullets. Sure doesn't help me, anyway.

You know, if one looks at the 387 files at... mushca.com, (sorry, had to look it up) one will find that there's one particularly beloved game for the Atari and beyond. Pac-Man is probably number one, of course, but I dare say that Peter Liepa's Boulder Dash ranks a close second. So much so, in fact, that it's spawned several cheap knock-offs, and several indirect grid game clones that feature a Rockford-type avatar having to perform similar tasks, probably collecting keys for individual locks and such. Since when do keys and locks form a perfect organic system, I ask you? Why do both disappear when used in video games? Anyway, I've spent a good portion of today playing a particularly cruel spinoff of Boulder Dash called Pac Boulder, which just happens to combine BOTH Pac-Man and Boulder Dash: the graphics of Pac-Man, the game engine of Boulder Dash, and frankly, doing a disservice to both. But I am a fickle man, and grow weary of the same old, PLAYABLE mazes. I need a challenge! Whoever designed Pac Boulder sure loves those walls that grow, and uses them far too often as tricky traps. At least give people one dirt grid to attempt escape! I gotta go...

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Dummy. I shoulda called the jpeg file 'Stealthscape." Oh well. Personally, even though I've experienced Stealth first, I think Landscape's got it going on! Cool 3D rendering at the beginning of the game of the grid, unlimited energy, dancing drones... then again, it really sucks when they come right at you and there's practically nothing you can do about it. That must be where the missile comes in in 'Stealth.' Stealth's got more bells 'n whistles to be sure... okay, so Stealth is an improvement. I have to admit.

Found it! And thank God too, because I barely got a wink of sleep last night... As it turns out, I didn't have the Games #59 file unzipped. Shame on me. But my vague recollections of the game, Citadel Warrior, were correct: no wussy-sounding name, purple maze, kinda boring, funny-looking avatar... Then, there's the actual game itself. The spirals you have to pick up... you have to be EGG-ZACTLY right over them, otherwise it's a no-go. Thank goodness the four at the end are lined up the way they are. Ultimately, the forces of evil are welcome to this crazy citadel. Case in point #1: the baddies that randomly appear and struggle with the diagonal portions of the citadel. The diagonals they can't handle, but the horizontals and verticals? Just fine. Too well, in fact. You have to be exactly over the spirals, or Cyclotrons, but the bad guys? One touch and you're gone. Oh, and the maze reserves the right to explode whenever it feels like. Probably before you reach the end of the 2nd round, and definitely before you get to the second intersection of the maze in the 3rd round. Too crazy for me. I need a full-on adrenaline rush with my video games, not a disappointment like this. More like English Software's Fire Chief, but playable.

As usual, I'm not getting anywhere in my life. But I did manage to clean up some of the cat's vomit! One of the perks of being up so late. Also, I managed to trace the Lempeurer lineage of games. Time Runner, Snokie ... all the way up to Flak, the Xevious-clone masterpiece. Why, I bet you could find BOTH FunSoft and Adventure International on Google Earth! Why do I have to do all the work? See, they give you the addresses and... ah, skip it. They're probably strip malls now. I hate to say it, but I think Snokie's like the screamapillar on The Simpsons... Maybe God wants Snokie to die! He sure makes a big dramatic exit off this mortal coil, you gotta give 'im that. The Grim Reaper treasures every Snokie that bites the big one.
As for the Preppies, well, they're a dime a dozen. Preppie II sucks. I mean, clearly not as fun as Preppie I. Preppie I's about the thrill of retrieving golf balls. Preppie II glorifies manual labor. The labor of painting. I've had enough of the real thing this summer.

As long as I'm about to go to bed anyway, lemme tell you about my latest quest. Ever have one of those things nagging at you? You try to remember what it is, even though it's not worth it? Well, mine is this Atari maze game... I think the maze is purple, and your avatar is an 8-ball looking thing. The game itself was kinda boring to me when I first played it... but for some reason, I gotta get back to it. I think it's on one of the 266. You know the 266?... CRAP! There's 387 now? So much to do, so little time...

1/15/'18 - Man, I must've been in a bad mood when I blogged about Preppie 1. Why, I didn't even talk about how the game used to frustrate me, especially the much hated level 6. These were the days of ... wait for it... CASSETTE TAPE DRIVES! Wow. Wonder if there's any Atari programmer out there who made half a million dollars off of games on a cassette tape. But hey! Can't argue with resluts results! Sure, it took about five minutes to load a game. Didn't always work, but games were about 8K or 16K... apparently, just enough for a cassette tape to handle. I did work briefly for a company that had tape backups, but those were on douche-y DAT tapes, and they didn't want to pay royalties or user fees for the specialty software needed to retrieve files from them. Cheapskates. Well, that's private industry for ya! If there's a way out of paying for something, it will be found. God bless the inventive Thomas Edison, he just couldn't keep other people in the world from paying him for the privilege of using motion picture film, or the cameras or the projectors. But I did spend a lot of my ill-spent youth on Preppie 1. Preppie 2, not as much. Besides, Preppie 2 has a glitch in the emulator version. I mean, basing a whole game on avoiding getting run over by a lawn mower can be fun, but Preppie 2 makes it into a long dull chore somehow. Guess I'll just have to go back to watching Dead Alive for the real deal. Of course, the guy in that kind of wears the lawn mower on his chest, so it's not quite the same.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Maybe video games are a habit like smoking or drinking after all... I think I'm more obsessed with the idea of Getaway! than the actual game itself. Not that it's not without its charms. Apparently programmer Mark Reid also got to work on E.T., the Atari 8-bit video game... not the disastrous Atari 2600 cartridge version. Get E.T. out of the hole! And it makes sense: both games involve giant scrolling Graphics 13 four-color fonts. The cop cars get a little too relentless, the re-fueling a little too slow. Some games don't want you to play them too long. And no, I am NOT going to do the entire screen! No time for the fun stuff.

The Underground. The Ropes. The Falls. The Shaft. The Pyramid. And finally... The Treasure. A toast to the awesome vids of yesteryear! A toast to Tim Martin and Micro Graphic Image for the classic Spelunker... and of course, a nod to Broderbund for its reboot, and for fixing it so that you can pick up multiple treasures without fear of losing all the points that get counted too slowly! ...oh, these images are going to take forever. Damn slow computer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The original game only needed 48K to run!

Friday, September 16, 2011

I never tried Millipede for the Atari 8-bit... and I'm glad I never did. The arcade version is a full-on adrenaline rush. The Atari 8-bit version is as bad as the Crystal Castles 8-bit emulation... slightly better than the Crystal Castles 2600 emulation. Actually, the 2600 emulation of Millipede is preferable to the Atari 8-bit version! Go figure! I'm just glad I didn't plunk down $39.99 for the cartridge, BACK IN THE DAY... No wonder the 400s and 800s failed, as nice as the 400's flat keyboard was. People still want keys to press, no matter how flat they get. Some of the Mac keyboards are getting damn close to the 400 style these days.

So, who is this Dan fellow, anyway? And why does he need to strike back? Perhaps Wikipedia knows, as the web has a well-documented nerd bias... okay, Wikipedia doesn't seem to have an official Dan Strikes Back page, but here's one at Atari cave dot com! Definitely a more loving tribute than I can muster for Dan Strikes Back... these giant uploads take forever. As with Pac-Man, where the orange ghost Clyde tends to get me the most due to his erratic unpredictable behaviour, in Dan Strikes Back, the enemy that gets me the most are the randomly flying things that do regular tours of the area being scrolled. They get doubly worse once you collect the Kate diamond at the sixth level and try to work your way back to the top. So who is this Kate, anyway, alluded to at the bottom of the screen? And is it a fitting tribute? We may never know, and I may be the only one who cares... so never mind. Damn, that image is taking forever! ..Finally! Good Lourdes.
p.s. I should mention that I used to play this one a lot. A fine member of the English Software Company games collection. Apparently I have an above-average compulsion to beat these games or sump-thing... I know, I know. Nice try, "The Video Game Fanatic," but the damage is done.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Finally! Long download. And of course, for some reason my stupid Atari emulator won't let me cheat and play the game a little bit slower. The board scrolls by too fast. Basically, it's English Software Company's "Caverns of Mars", but without the multiple levels. It's one giant level, and it's all you get. Kinda like the Caverns of Mars follow-up, Phobos. Arguably, you get more freedom in Phobos. After all, who among us hasn't skipped past the final obstacle to destroy in level D, only to find we have to keep going to Level P? Speaking of which...